Apples in Caramel!

Okay, so.. it's not really caramel. Well, sort of. But it's amazing!!

Two apples, cored and chopped
2 Tb. honey of your choice*
4 Tb. Earth Balance, halved
1/4 C. apple cider (or so, a few splashes)
a splash of vanilla extract
a couple shakes of cinnamon
a nice healthy squeeze of lemon

Melt 2Tb Earth Balance in a pan on medium/med. low heat. When it is melted, toss in your apples. as they're frying, add the cinnamon and vanilla. Then, add the cider, and bring back up to a simmer. Add honey, lemon, and the rest of the Earth Balance. Simmer, stirring constantly, making sure to scrape up any spots that might start to stick. Once it gets nice and thick, take off the heat and serve!

*I used creamed honey, because we inherited a giant tub of it. Personally, I prefer blackberry or eucalyptus honey. If you don't eat/like honey, you can use brown sugar or grade B maple syrup for a similar effect, but you might have to adjust the proportions of the other ingredients.


Seriously easy. I'm eating it now just plain, but you could put it over ice cream or something similar. It's delish!

Almonds

So... They really are pasteurized.

At least in the states, I'm not sure about Canada yet.


I soaked some "raw" almonds to have some almond milk, and I've been trying to sprout them for about two days now. I'm seeing NO germination. At all. The sunflower seeds I sprouted are happy and sprouting away, but wow. This makes me really sad. No more sprouted almonds?!

Grr.

An Article on almonds in California, A petition you can sign


More sadness.

Hummus Sushi! *esplode*

Holy energy-giving vitamins, Batman!!

So, I've been sick for the past couple days. Not really sick, but sore throat and vitamin depletion from all the stress of moving up here. Enough to make me sleep until noon and have little energy. Today I got up at 9:30 (Goddess help me) against my better judgment and haven't stopped doing things around the house until about now. I drank some flax* and just finished eating some hummus sushi. And. Holy. Crap. Talk about a vitamin rush! I'm a little light-headed from the wondrous feeling all the raw veggies gave me. I have to admit that this is one of the only times feeling light-headed has felt so good. :)





Hummus Sushi

First, I made up a huge bowl of hummus from a mix. You can do whatever you want to it, but I made it basic so everyone in the house can enjoy it if they wish. To make this completely raw, I'd soak some nuts and seeds and grind them down to make something similar. To the mix, I added:

Hemp and Olive oils
A handful of dried Botija olives, minced
A huge clove of raw garlic, minced
A splash of Bragg's apple cider vinegar
Juice of half a lemon

For the filling:

1 carrot, shredded
1 small beet, shredded
2 purple kale leaves, chopped fine
A nice hunk of purple cabbage, chopped fine
Onion and Daikon sprouts

Layered it all, and rolled it up in nori!

Here's a fun pic of the shredded veggies:


*Drinking a mix of ground flax and water (or apple juice) is a great way to flush out the intestinal tract. I usually do a mix of 2-4 Tb, ground in a coffee grinder, then mixed with enough water to be drinkable. Make sure you drink it before it coagulates! :)


Blessings!

Update: Canada! (With Mandarin-Date Sweet Potatoes)

Wow. It has been a long while since I've posted here. But I have good reason! Jeremy and I moved to the Sunshine Coast, in British Columbia. Powell River, to be precise. Jeremy got a job at The Peak, which is the local newspaper, as a reporter. We've been looking to move to Canada for awhile now, to start a sustainable farm, but didn't think we'd get here so fast! The Sunshine Coast lives up to its name, but it was as if Winter rose up to greet us. The Day after we arrived, we got 4 inches of snow! It was definitely a white wonderland.

Here's Jeremy and I at our new home:

More photos coming soon!

I'm VERY excited because of this particular town. There are many good things going for it:
- First city in the world to ban GMO crops
- High population of people who follow the 100 Mile Diet, shortened to 50 Miles to accommodate the isolation - Only accessible by ferry (a must if strange, apocalyptic things happen[like zombies]) with a population of about 14K proper, 20K with surrounding towns
- Right-wing parties make up about 10% of the population, last to the Green, Liberal, and Socialist parties
- 600 musicians in the local musicians' directory (slightly irrelevant, but awesome!!)

and because of all (okay, well.. most) these things, there is a very high demand for more farms! I'm very pleased, because I can start with making food for the Farmer's Market and it looks like there aren't really any businesses around here that do lacto-fermented and cultured foods. So, I'm going to try my hand at cultured veggies! I've always wanted to do that, but never really had the fire lit under my ass to really do it. So, I've started my sourdough starter, and in a couple days will be able to make some breads and things to begin with. :) Yay!

AND, how could I post without a recipe? I mean seriously. I made this for US Thanksgiving, and is was a huge hit! Much better than your typical, gelatin-filled marshmallow stuff.

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Mandarin-Date Sweet Poatoes

3 sweet potatoes
juice of four mandarin oranges
half-package of dates (about two dozen)
two thin sliced mandarin oranges
two tablespoons earth balance
a light dusting of cloves and cinnamon

Chop the sweet potatoes and dates, and throw them into a rectangular baking dish. There's no need for peeling the potatoes; the skin is good for you!
Squeeze the oranges all over the potato mixture, then mix it all up really well with your hands*.
Top the mix with little dollops of Earth Balance (or smear, your hands are dirty after all), arrange the slices, and dust the spices across the top.

Bake in a 400 degree oven, covered, for about 30-45 minutes, 'til desired firmness.

Serve warm and enjoy! We loved this. :)

(*I tried mixing this with a big spoon, but quickly failed miserably, since the pan was so full. I prefer using my hands anyway. :P)


I hope everyone is having a wonderful winter season! <3

Blueberry Lavender Coconut Creme

Jeremy and I love to eat fresh, young thai coconuts. Ice cold from the fridge, we drink the sweet nectar first, then cleave the seed itself open and wedge the meat out with our fingers. It's like a drug. I mean, aside from the tasty goodness that is coconuts, the fresh ones are packed full of nutrients, and the nectar is very electrolyte rich. You can generally find them at Whole Foods or somewhere similar for a few dollars a piece, but you'll find the exact same thing at most asian markets, for usually a dollar each.

So, we were walking through the Farmer's Market in Santa Monica today (the one on Main St.) and I suddenly get this huge whiff of lavender. You see, at the market, there's a lavender vendor. I usually stop and browse, but today I had an instant surge of ideas running through my mind. Thoughts of work, cooking, and this blog, and just like that, this recipe was born. You can use lavender tea bags if you have them, but how could I turn down freshly dried lavender?


Blueberry Lavender Coconut Creme

1 young thai coconut, meat only (enjoy the water while you're preparing!)
1/2 c. frozen blueberries
2 heaping Tb. raw coconut butter
squeeze of lime, to taste

Lavender infusion:
a nice, packed handful of lavender flowers
1 c. water


First, bring a cup of water to a boil. Remove from the heat, throw the lavender in, get it thoroughly wet, and put the lid on. Let it sit for about 10 minutes. The water should be an intense, dark indigo. Strain, and squeeze as much of the infusion out as possible. (The water should be just warm.) Makes about 3/4 cup.

While the lavender is steeping. Get out your blender. In the blender, add the coconut meat and blueberries, and pulse them until they make a chunky paste. Add the coconut butter, and continue the pulse. It doesn't have to be smooth, just mixed up. Then, when the infusion is ready, add it and the lime juice, and blend until smooth, scraping down the sides with a spatula as you go.

Chill, and serve over fresh, ripe peach slices.


Note: this cream is only very faintly sweet, so feel free to add a touch of sweetener to taste. I would say, about 1 teaspoon agave, or honey if you can have it.

Mini Polenta Lasagnas with Rosemary Tapenade

I was feeling especially creative the other night, and I wanted polenta rounds, so I thought up this little ditty. I was also looking for a new use for the FYH mozzarella cheeze. I think I found one!


That's one of my cats, Silvanus, by the way. I shot the photos on the bed cuz that's where the best light was. :P

One tube sundried tomato and roasted garlic polenta, thinly sliced
Half a red pepper
1/2 c. Frozen spinach, thawed with a little lemon juice
1/3 c. Favorite marinara sauce (fire roasted crushed tomatoes)
a nice sized chunk FYH mozz. cheeze, thinly sliced

rosemary tapenade:
12 dried black botija olives
12 green botija olives (J says about 4 oz.)
1/4 c grapeseed oil
1/4 c good white wine
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
fresh ground lemon pepper to taste
4 large cloves garlic (to be roasted with polenta)
splash of water if needed
Blended!

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Put some olive oil on a cookie sheet, and arrange polenta with raw garlic(for tapenade) and bake.
After about 10 minutes, take out the garlic for use in the tapenade, and flip the polenta. Put the polenta back in and bake about 10 more minutes, until lightly browned and crispy.


When the polenta is done, stack ingredients as desired, then bake again at 450 for about five minutes, then broil to melt cheeze.

enjoy!

Makes about a dozen mini lasagnas, depending on how many rounds you snack on as you go along. :)

Berry Mango Delight - Raw

I just threw this together one morning.. and I'm so happy that I did. It was so good, and incredibly refreshing for the morning. Just the right amount of fat from the coconut so there wasn't a sugar spike/drop that I usually get from fruit in the morning. Yay!

1 cup soaked goji berries (without soak water)
2 Tb soaked golden berries
1 smallish banana
2 very heap Tb coconut butter

Blend till smooth, pour over 1 fresh chunked mango!

Choco-Banana Pudding! - Raw

2 smallish bananas
1 avocado
raw cacao powder to taste (maybe 4 heap Tb)
about 1 Tb agave nectar
1/2 tsp vanilla (extract or raw powder, to taste)
1/2 c. fresh almond milk (optional)

In a food processor, blend bananas and avocado until smooth, add to a nice sized bowl. Bright green, YUM!

In the bowl, with a whisk, add the cacao, agave, and vanilla. Makes a nice, thick pudding. I added the almond milk to thin it out a bit, but you don't really need to. ;)

Avo Gazpacho and Thai Veggies - Raw!

Here's some more recipes that I found on my old journal:
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Avo Gazpacho
Veggies w/ Thai seed paste


First, what I did was grate some of the carrots(3) and a nice fat cucumber. I squeezed the juice out and put it aside.

Avo Gazpacho
In the food processor, I put together:
A nice huge handful of parsley
An avocado
Roughly a cup of soaked sun-dried tomatoes(with soak water, maybe two cups?)
Five dried, soaked shiitake mushrooms, with soak water(probably altogether about 1 1/2 cup)
3 green onions
Juice of half lemon
Splash of Bragg's apple cider vinegar
Squirt of Bragg's
The strained water from the carrot/cucumber
A nice healthy shake of kelp powder (about 1 heap Tb)

once it's all smooth, I just put it into a bowl and added a bit more water to thin it out, and salt to taste.
--

Thai veggies!

Took out the bowl with the carrots/cucumber..
added:
1 red pepper, diced
1 large beet, shredded (used the mandolin for very fine shred)
THEN!

In the food processor:
1/4 cup soaked"wild jungle peanuts*"
Small handful unsoaked "WJP*"
3/4 cup soaked pumpkin seeds
2 heap Tb (roughly) raw coconut butter
1 VERY heap Tb tahini
1'' of fresh ginger, chopped
Juice of half lemon
Handful of fresh thai basil/cinnamon basil from my plants outside
2 cubes frozen basil (from TJ's, about 2Tb)
splash Bragg's ACV
kelp
little salt

Processed with a bit of water to thin, and poured over the veg, mixed. Yum!


*"Wild Jungle Peanuts" I've found recently. They're the first ancient peanut, grown in Ecuador. All commercial peanuts have some amount of a mold called "aflatoxin", but WJP got tested, and has absolutely NO aflatoxin! Finally, good, organic raw peanuts. Yay!
They're from http://www.elfwholesale.com (currently out of stock, but they'll get 'em in soon, J says. He works there)



Enjoy! :D

"Yogurt" seed spread

I was going through my old journal to find some of the recipes I've written in the past, and I've found a couple. Here's one:

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Okay, so I was using my handy chopper to grind some pumpkin seeds for the split pea soup I'm making, and decided to save a little bit for an experiment. I guessed on the measurements when I wrote it out, but here you go!

"Yogurt" seed spread

About:
3tb ground raw pumpkin seeds
1tb ground raw sesame seeds
1tb raw tahini
2tb ground raw flax (ground in the coffee grinder)
1t kelp powder
1 1/2 t raw organic apple cider vinegar
splash of extra virgin olive oil (cold pressed!)
A nice squirt of lime juice (long enough to say "Mmmm.." :)
small squeeze of raw blue agave
2tb water (enough to activate the flax so it coagulates, and just to generally cream the paste out)
2tb Maple syrup, or to taste (I use grade B maple)
pinch of salt

Add everything into a bowl but the maple syrup. Stir and let sit for a couple minutes (so the flax can do its thing) and then when you come back to it, it should have thickened considerably. That's when you can add the maple... I used about 2 tablespoons, I think. :)
Makes about 1 hefty cup.

I spread it on some bread that I toasted with Earth Balance in a frying pan, but you can use anything you'd like. Some chopped bananas with this spooned over would be great. :)

I'm really surprised though, because it tastes like yogurt. The mix of the tahini, syrup, and apple cider vinegar I think is what did it. It's very tasty. :)

Amy's gluten-free Pizza!

I don't usually buy pre-packaged food products, but holy crap did I need some pizza! What I was thinking to do was buy some complete protein bread, vegan cheeze, and fry up some mushrooms. All the complete protein breads had gluten *sigh* so Jeremy and I looked at Amy's pizzas, some of which have corn crusts. Problem was, they're mm mm cheesy. But wait: rice crust, dairy-free pizza with spinach? Sold! We bought some extra mozzarella cheeze*, and skipped our way home.

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Here are some extras I added once we got home:
5 large shiitake mushrooms, cleaned and destemmed, chopped
4 cloves garlic, diced
2T Grapeseed oil
salt to taste
1 smallish tomato, thinly sliced
about 8 thin slices of mozzarella cheeze

In a pan, heat grapeseed oil on medium high heat. Toss in mushrooms, salt. Sautee until wilted, then add garlic and continue the sautee until garlic is soft.

Arrange all toppings onto pizza, and bake as directed.
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Now, after I was done with all of this, the pizza itself had thawed a little bit, so I put it on a cookie sheet so it wouldn't sag. Because of this small thaw, I think, the crust nearly burned. I didn't get enough broil time to melt the cheezes, but even so, they were both fairly soft. So I took it out, and pizza was had.

I've got to say, that I was disappointed in the nearly burning crust. The crust was pretty browned pre-freezing, but I abided by the cooking time. Aside from that, the pizza was pretty good. The cheezes were nice, I liked the spinach, and it wasn't slathered in tomato sauce. It really needed the mushrooms, but I think everything needs mushrooms. ;)


*Follow Your Heart vegan cheeze is one of the only palatable cheezes I've found so far. When I used to eat dairy, I was a big melty cheese person. I loved mozzarella cheeses, and was always very picky about the true cheese, not the lame, not stringy, shredded cheese. I really like Follow Your Heart, and they're local! Score!


Time for bed now. Goodnight!

Ginger Beet Juice

I love beets.

When I say I love beets, I mean I really love beets. I'm one of those people who loves to take them straight from the garden, rub the dirt off, and bite into 'em. I never understood why people peeled them, either, as I've come to understand that much of the nutrients in vegetables come from the skins. So, why, in our modern age, do we always peel our veggies and then cook the crap out of them? The world may never know. ;)

I, on the other hand, like peels. And raw veggies. This morning, I knew I would be making soup later, but needed a quick something to drink that would give me some energy and fight off the cold that I feel coming on, so I pulled out the ol’ juicer and made some beet juice.

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Ginger Beet Juice

3 large beets, quartered, tops removed (or can be added, but I ate ‘em earlier)

3 decent sized garlic cloves*

2 inch chunk of ginger, with skin

2 good splashes of lemon juice (or juice from 2 lemons)

Juice beets, ginger, and garlic. (I put the ginger and garlic in between the chunks of beets, to avoid clogs) Add lemon juice to juicer, to rinse it out a bit. Optional: grab a hunk of the pulp^ and throw it in, for texture. :)

Enjoy!

Makes about 3 cups, but will vary by the size of the beets.

*Jeremy, my fiance, said it had too much garlic, so feel free to lessen the amount, or leave them out completely. I love garlic, and they’re fantastic raw if you’re not feeling well.

^If you want to use the pulp for something, it can be put straight into soups, salads, or dehydrated for crackers. Ooh! I wonder if it’d make good mashed “potatoes”! I’ll try that tonight.

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Have a wonderful afternoon!

~Lyra

Welcome to my Blog...

Hello, and welcome.

My name is Lyra, and I'm a serious geek in the kitchen.

I've been experimenting and playing with vegan and raw dishes for years, but very recently found out that I'm allergic to gluten. For me, gluten makes it impossible for me to eliminate for days afterward. I hadn't realized that it was gluten that was doing this until I did a week-long sugar/carbohydrate fast a couple months ago. It turned out that the moment I stopped eating so much pasta, bread, and cereal, I was regular again. Yay! I've started my gluten-free revolution!

So, in order to keep a record of everything I'm doing, and share with the masses (rather than calling up my friends at Midnight with exhausted glee) I thought I'd start this blog. Here, you'll find vegan and raw dishes, all gluten-free!

I look forward to sharing my excitement and fun foods with everyone.


Blessings,
Lyra